Umā Dinsmore-Tuli needs your help- time-sensitive

Dear Sisters, Brothers, Friends and Students of Yoni Shakti and Total Yoga Nidra teachings,

Umā Dinsmore-Tuli urgently needs your help. She wouldn’t ask for it herself, so we are asking on her behalf.

Our dear Sister and Wisdom Keeper is facing immediate personal and financial collapse. We need your help this week.

We are a group of her students who have gathered to help raise funds for Umā. We call on you with love and humility to help sustain her and her vital work, at a time on this Earth where deep collective healing is so incredibly essential.

We want to celebrate the matriarchal gift economy and what it can do to build a new world of gratitude, connection and solidarity.

Why is Umā in this situation?

(If you'd like to read more about Umā's current situation, we've shared a longer version of her story at the end of this page).

1. Litigation from abusive yoga schools: When Umā published the 2020 edition of Yoni Shakti, she disclosed multiple abuses in the yoga industrial complex. As a result, she faced

litigation from one of the yoga schools she outed. This resulted in a profound loss of income, as well as extensive legal fees.

2. Health challenges: Both Umā and her close family have also suffered severe health problems, in some cases leading to hospitalisation, in the past four years - some of which

have been a direct result of the stress of fighting a legal battle to defend the voices of survivors of sexual abuse in the yoga industry. Umā is currently caring for her mother and her husband Nirlipta, who are both very sick.

3. Loss of income during the pandemic: Umā was unable to teach any in-person events for the twelve month period that she was trapped (by COVID policies) in Canada, where she had travelled to care for a family member during a health crisis. Her earnings plummeted during this time, whilst she was also paying for the legal fees in response to the litigation outlined above.

4. Financial catastrophe : As a neurodivergent woman dedicated to sharing her work generously through gift economy and free offerings, Umā has unfortunately been misled, deceived, swindled and misguided by those to whom she entrusted her finances.

Why your help is needed - today

The unique teachings offered by Umā and the Yoga Nidra Network have been lovingly designed over many years, often putting service and truth above profit. All of this is at risk of coming to an abrupt end - in the next days and weeks - due to unmanageable historic financial debt arising from the situation outlined here, making it impossible for Umā to

continue to maintain her Stroud yoga centre and family home which has been shared so generously with others over the years.

How you can help:

Please make your contribution via this GoFundMe page.

We have one month to raise £54,000.

This is our opportunity to express love and gratitude for the work of Umā Dinsmore-Tuli, and to demonstrate the value of this work in our lives.

Any donation, no matter how big or small, is welcome. If 2000 of us all offer a gift of £27 this week, we will ensure her work can continue, for us, and for the future.

In return for making a donation, you will receive a free Yoga Nidra gratitude practice, recorded by Umā especially for those who give to this fundraiser.

This is a crucial point for Umā and support is urgently needed in order for her and her community and its offerings to continue. Please help us today by contributing to the

fundraiser, or helping in another way - we outline some options below.

With great respect and love,

Laurence, Indiana, Liz & Gemma

P.S.: Please forward this email to everyone you know who has benefited from Umā and Nirlipta’s work. If 2000 of us are able to contribute £27 this week, we will ensure their work can continue, for us, and for the future.

P.P.S.: Other ways you can help…

1. Become a paid subscriber to Umā’s Patreon page:

You can become a subscriber here ( https://www.patreon.com/Umādinsmoretuli )

In particular, the £18 a month Cycliteracy and Seers Circle, which offers daily yoga nidras and a WhatsApp circle of members as well as all the other benefits of the Patreon subscribers, is a wonderful and sustainable way of ensuring Umā can continue to do her work.

2. Sign up to one of the live or recorded courses on the Yoga Nidra Network:

As well as the in-person and online trainings (the next in-person Total Yoga Nidra training starts in May), there are plenty of recorded courses which can be done in your own time and at your own pace, including the Well Woman Yoga Therapy Online Immersion, the Total Yoga Nidra Online Immersion and Yoga Nidra for Insomnia. More details here: https://www.yoganidranetwork.org/.

3. Build community: Share the teachings and courses

If you have completed a Yoni Shakti or Total Yoga Nidra course, or are a Patreon member, please tell your friends and followers by sharing your experience of the teachings and direct them to the Yoga Nidra Network page: https://www.yoganidranetwork.org/.

4. Forward this email to everyone you know who has benefited from Umā and Nirlipta’s work. If 2000 of us are able to contribute £27, we will ensure their work can continue, for us, and for the future.

More about Umā's current situation:

We’re reaching out to you as supporters of the ground-breaking, radical yoga philosophy which honours the wisdom goddesses (the Mahavidyas) and empowers women and every human to respect their bodies, their natural rhythms and cycles and their right to rest.

Umā and Nirlipta’s radical approach to their work has ensured the continuing respect of the traditions from which the teachings are inspired, and ensured maximum accessibility for everyone to benefit from them.

This way of teaching and offering yoga has often directly challenged the most powerful economic forces at the heart of our society and the yoga industrial complex and empowered many thousands of students and trainees to map an alternative path to yogic liberation that is more equitable, inclusive and loving.

Have you ever benefited from any of the work of Umā Dinsmore-Tuli, or the yoga nidra network which she founded in 2011? Have you ever enjoyed a free yoga nidra, or attended a training, or a workshop that supported you? Now is the chance to express gratitude and to demonstrate the value of this work.

Next year Umā will be sixty years old. For the past thirty years she has dedicated her life and opened her family home to share the healing practices of yoga nidra and yoga therapy, especially for women’s health. She has written six books, mothered three children and cares for three elderly relatives and a very sick husband.

Imagine if you had worked for thirty years to share a radical, feminist and intuitive approach to healing based on rest and reconnection to the deep feminine, and that once you got to sixty your entire livelihood stood to be eradicated, and your home repossessed and your capacity to teach, write and share, wiped out because you were in deep debt. Imagine if you had stood up against abusive lineages, spoken out against the yoga industrial complex and been swindled and stolen from by people who could see you just didn’t understand how to run a business for your own profit.

Imagine if the generosity with which you had shared your home and your teachings resulted in a total failure of your business and you had no money to keep afloat, let alone to continue to be an inspiration to all who had benefited from the teachings you had shared. Imagine if you had tried all your life to operate outside of a system that values everything only by profit and monetary success, only to be crushed by the very system whose inequalities you had always criticised. Imagine if all the efforts you had ever made to show a different way, a way based on love and respect and reconnection, resulted in your own personal financial collapse?

Imagine that.

This is not imaginary. It is the situation Umā is currently facing, and she needs the help of the community she has given an abundance of energy, time, resources and love to create.

Please offer your gift and thanks via this GoFundMe page.

Any donation, no matter how big or small, is welcome. If 2000 of us all offer a gift of £27 this week, we will ensure their work can continue, for us, and for the future.

This is a crucial point for Umā and support is urgently needed in order for her and her community and its offerings to continue. Please help us today by contributing to the fundraiser, or by sharing this email with everyone you know who has benefitted from Umā's work. Thank you.